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Management Decision, Chapter 5

Web 2.0

You arrive early in the office to prepare for a meeting with your IT team. It has becomeincreasingly clear to you that technology is changing—and fast—and many of the old ITtools your company still uses are becoming

obsolete. Add to that your growing salesforceof 20-somethings who find these tools unfamiliar and burdensome. They’ve been beggingyou to allow them to use the Web 2.0 tools on their smartphones. So you called thismeeting to explore the possibilities with your IT team.

Since you just bought your smartphone two weeks ago, you had to learn about thevariety of Web 2.0 tools available and brush up on their costs and benefits. Socialnetworking tools allow people to create a customized public (or private) profile andupdate it instantly. Internet-based applications like word processing, spreadsheets, andcalendars take the software off your computer so you can create, manipulate, and usedocuments anytime, anywhere. And cloud computing enables information ofall sorts tobe stored not on individual devices that have to be synched or connected to a network butin a digital “cloud” that can be accessed from your desktop, your laptop, or yoursmartphone anywhere, anytime.

“This has a lot of potential,” you think.

No more “Oops, I left that at the office”ruining a sales call, since documents can be accessed anywhere. You can keep up withyour sales reps wherever they are—and they can keep in touch with you, too. If they havequestions in the middle of a sales call, they can get the information they need to clinchthe deal on the spot, since information—or the experts who can supply it—are instantlyaccessible. Anyone in the company can access the most recent performance statistics,find out how many items are leftin inventory, or contact a colleague instantly. And Web2.0 tools even offer new ways to reach out to potential customers. Your tennis partner,whose company has already begun adopting these tools, told you, “We’re a lot less miredin technology. Employees

say they can spend less time dealing with the IT system andmore time actually thinking

about their work.”

You know that Web 2.0 has its disadvantages, though. It won’t be cheap to adopta cloud-based system, equip employees with the devices they’ll needto access it, andtrain them how to use it. Also, tech companies are only beginning to integrate socialnetworking, Internet-based software, and cloud computing into a single system, so thereare still bugs. Maybe it’s worth adopting one or two tools and moving toward Web 2.0gradually. It also means your IT team will have less control over the flow of information,and you’re definitely concerned about security. Still, the advantages are significant, andadopting a system

What decision criteria should you consider as you decide how to transition to Web2.0? How would you weight those criteria? Which would be most important to you?

2.

Generate a list of possible courses of action you could take. Evaluate those optionsbased on your decision criteria.

3.

How might you use groups to help you make this decision? Think about how youwould involve your IT team. But also: How would you involve employees? 4. Whatwould be a maximal decision? In other words, what is the optimal solution? Underwhat circumstances would you satisfice? What is a “good enough” alternative to theoptimal solution?